Pages

My Accident

It was June 17, 2000. I was twenty-two years old and loving life. I had just left an apprentice program, now working a full-time job at a studio ranch in Mission, B.C. This ranch was set up for movies, TV series and also provided the horses needed for many films in the area. I had just driven home from my first off-road trip done alone, or should I say with my Dog, Cheers. I had driven from BC Canada to Cockren, Alberta. What a magnificent drive through the Rocky Mountains. It was a great five-day vacation visiting a friend in Alberta. It was 7:00 a.m. and, like normal, I was at the studio ranch feeding the horses. There are two barns; one very new and then the older one, which was actually used in a TV series, called Neon Rider. When I went into the old barns loft to get the hay, I saw in front of me a tall tower of hay that resembled the stacking game Jenga. While I had been away someone had fed all the hay bales that had been available to climb to the top, and had now started to jimmy bales out from wherever possible. These bales were one-hundred pounds each and the tower of hay was about ten feet tall. Not being strong enough to pull any more from the stack, I climbed to the top. This is where I discovered the problem: this older style barn had a 2-inch wire beam that stretched across the barn holding its roof on, and the bales were tightly wedged between this and the wall. I’ll admit now that maybe I wasn’t thinking clearly when I made my next move; however, in self-defense, I didn’t get this job by not getting things done and needing the constant help of others. I couldn’t rationalize having to wake my extremely temperamental boss up this early to tell him I couldn’t feed the horses because I couldn’t get the hay. SO I proceeded to loosen the top bale of hay so that I could throw it down. As I did so I felt the whole stack become unsteady. I aborted the mission of getting the bale of hay and decided to jump down. Jumping from such a height causes you to crouch to absorb the shock when you hit the ground. As I landed and crouched, that top bale came down and hit me on the back. It was instant; I was on the floor and had zero feeling from my belly button down. Actually, I couldn’t feel my right breast. I remember hitting my legs, trying to move them and the stabbing breath-taking pain coming from my back. I tried to yell for help, and found my voice very weak; I couldn’t take a large enough breath to really call for help. Looking back it seems like it took twenty minutes for someone to find me, and when they did they had thought I was being attacked by a horse. Little did they know what they would find in the hay loft. As I remember it, it was about forty-five minutes before the ambulance arrived. Being me, I was optimistic and as I was loaded into the ambulance I told them I’d see them all tomorrow and to please not forget to feed the Buffalo. However, I knew it was really bad. Having had a few other broken body parts in my past, I knew how good the gas makes you feel so I just started huffing away. They took me to the Mission hospital, which is a very small unit, and they aren’t even open on weekends, except for emergencies. I could hear the nurses talking to a Doctor about what they thought they should do. During this conversation, another nurse thought it would be a good idea to take my hay-covered clothing off. She cut my shirt and then attempted to just slide it out from underneath me. Instead of a gentle slip of the garment, she actually yanked it as if I was a glass of wine sitting on a table and she was doing her magic trick getting the tablecloth off without moving the wine glass. My whole body jerked to the left, stabbing pain shot through my back and arms. I screamed, and cried. That was it. I yelled to the Ambulance people who were almost out the door “Put me back in, don’t leave me here, take me to Vancouver!” I was now able to yell very loud, and there was no way I was staying in Mission. Once back in the ambulance after inhaling another tank of gas, I managed to slip into a tearful sleep.The lurching of the gurney and flashing neon lights from above had me awake in Vancouver General hospital. The real pain was about to begin, but the real good painkillers were also now available. After my x-rays, the first to arrive in the hospital was my good friend Robin Brunei. When he came in, the first thing I did was flip my blanket off and say, “Look what they did to my clothing!” I was trying to show him how they cut my jeans and shirt. I guess I had forgotten about the part where they had actually removed my clothing. Robin was kind enough to tell me at a later date that I had indeed flashed him my whole nude body, and that I had a lovely tan. My mother was next and that was when the doctor came to report the finding from the x-rays. I asked him not to candy-coat it and be blunt. “It’s as bad as it gets, ” he said. “The only way it could be a worse break is if it had been higher up the spine.” I’ll confess a little sugar would have helped that go down. I had broken my T11 and T12 vertebras. They were shattered, and my spinal cord had been severed; only 6 % of people with this injury ever walk again. My mother made the phone call to my dad.I was scheduled for surgery the next day. I had intense burning pain down my body, and learned this was neurological pain. I also learned putting ice on it actually fed the fire. I also had extreme pain in my lower abdomen that required many ultra sound tests. Since I was in so much pain they put me on Gravol, an anti Nausea drug that had the opposite effect, and put my brain into spins. Having not eaten since the night prior in preparation for surgery, I found out it was pushed back to the end of the day, and then to the next day, and then again to the next day. Apparently, an injury like mine is not life-threatening and since it can’t get worse, I could wait. Surgery resulted in one medal bar, three screws, and wire mesh wrapped around my newly constructed vertebra thanks to the bone graft taken from my hip. I was left with forty-five stitch strips in my back and many more stitches in my hip. I woke up in my new hospital room, not wanting to know what was next. A bale of hay had changed my life. What a story that would be “I was taken out by a single, simple hay bale.”